HugoReview

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Scorsese's love letter to cinema.

By Daniel Krupa

Martin Scorsese's latest film, adapted from the award-winning novel by Brian Selznick, centres on the meandering adventures of an orphaned boy named Hugo. Following the untimely death of his doting father – a skilled watchmaker, capable of fixing anything – Hugo goes to live with his permanently-intoxicated Uncle who is responsible for calibrating the clocks at one of Paris's busiest train stations.

The only possession Hugo brings with him is a mysterious automaton. It's been sorely neglected; its joints seized with decades of accumulated rust. The resourceful young Hugo pilfers widgets, screws, and springs as he attempts to mend the anthropomorphic toy. Eventually, he succeeds, aided by a heart-shaped key belonging to a girl named Isabelle, played by Kick-Ass's Chloe Grace Moretz. And while you'd expect the adventure to kick on once Hugo fixes the automaton, propelling the two young leads through a captivating series of encounters, the brakes are strangely applied.

Without wishing to give away too much, Hugo and Isabelle embark on a journey into the origins of the movie industry, and in particular they are drawn to the work of cinematic conjuror Georges M&#Array;li&#Array;s. And while most of this material is very interesting, especially for any cinephile, it feels awkward inserted into the personal story of little Hugo Cabret.

Their whistle-stop education consists of heading to the library, where they read greedily about the Lumi&#Array;re Brothers and The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, which terrified naïve audiences at the turn of the nineteenth century. They sneak into matinee screenings of Safety Last! in which Harold Lloyd precariously dangles from the face of a clock. The film later takes great pleasure in meticulously recreating such iconic cinematic moments, absorbing them into substance of its own story.

Initially these scenes, while charming, feel like indulgent digressions, until you realise that Hugo, despite what its title might suggest, is not about the eponymous orphaned boy, it's a film about film itself. Hugo and Isabelle are merely the eyes through which the magic of cinema is registered. Sadly, the wonder at times feels like mild interest, such are the lacklustre performances of the usually-excellent Moretz and newcomer Asa Butterfield. In their defence, both are saddled with a strained screenplay that attempts to force emotion upon its audience, instead of earning it.

Jude Law, Ray Winston and Emily Mortimer, despite their prominent billing, barely feature in the movie. Sacha Baron Cohen delivers a memorable turn as the amusingly petty Station Inspector. It is perhaps Ben Kingsley who turns in the most accomplished performance, though, as the deeply melancholic Georges M&#Array;li&#Array;s, the visionary artist who believes that all his best work has been destroyed to aid the war effort

Hugo was meant to change everything. It was the film that was meant to legitimise 3D, elevating it from a cheap parlour trick into a credible cinematic technique. And while some of its passages are truly immersive, they don't surpass comparable sequences like, say, the celebrated tracking scene from Goodfellas, which is just as enveloping, though lacking that extra dimension.

Although fascinating and a true cinematic curiosity worth seeing by anyone interested in the magical origins of cinema, Hugo is never really entertaining as a standalone movie, and fails to reproduce the wonder of the films it is so clearly enamoured by. Some might find its excursions pretentious yet Scorsese's intentions are undeniably true – edifying though never truly enchanting, it's a wonderfully-textured film crafted by a man who is obviously still deeply bewitched by the magic of cinema.